


pass me another bottle, honey, the Jäger's so sweet (but if it keeps you around, then I'm down)

by moreissuesthanvogue



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunken Confessions, Hacking, Humor, M/M, except not really, the buddy cop au nobody asked for except Liv
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 15:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16410797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreissuesthanvogue/pseuds/moreissuesthanvogue
Summary: The first time they meet (again), Baze shouts, “It’s you!!!” in a very accusatory tone.Îmwe grins, wide and toothy, gums showing, then replies airily, “It’s always nice to meet a fan.”Or, the one in which Baze asked for a master hacker to help him exact his revenge and got Chirrut instead.





	pass me another bottle, honey, the Jäger's so sweet (but if it keeps you around, then I'm down)

**Author's Note:**

> So a while ago on tumblr I did some writing ask games, one of which was "give me an au and I'll tell you 5 things that happen in it", and Liv (seaofolives) asked me "also the aus are fun so: au where baze is a cop with questionable morals (think bruce willis or liam neeson) and likes to do things His Way and he has to find a legendary hacker and protect said legendary hacker who will help him crack some code he needs for his Revenge Mission but the legendary hacker turns out to be some blind guy named chirrut imwe who he also arrested once for operating a fraudulent fortune telling shop in chinatown (yeah my prompts are stuck in the 90s)". This happened. Except, like, revamped, because [the original tumblr post](http://vampirestark.tumblr.com/post/172603204346/also-the-aus-are-fun-so-au-where-baze-is-a-cop) has around 400 words less shenanigans.
> 
> Not beta-read, any and all mistakes are mine.

The first time they meet (again), Baze shouts, “It’s you!!!” in a very accusatory tone. In the privacy of his own mind, he realizes that maybe he was being too loud, but. It is Him. Mouthy twunky guy he may or may not have had a thing for in his twenties. (More importantly, mouthy twunky guy who ran a fraudulent fortune telling shop because, “well, policeman officer, sir, being blind and Chinese gives me exactly one career path and if I keep my fortune telling generic and cryptic enough, something’s bound to be true”.)

Îmwe grins, wide and toothy, gums showing, then replies airily, “It’s always nice to meet a fan.” A pause. “No autographs, though, because I can’t read and might sign a document I don’t agree with.”

Another pause, during which Baze (very briefly, and not really seriously, because. Well. Îmwe is ridiculously handsome and probably ― definitely, Baze remembers ― more dangerous than he looks) considers strangling the insufferable man, before Îmwe continues with a flirty lilt to his voice and waggling eyebrows, “I wouldn’t mind it if it were a marriage certificate, however.”

Baze takes a deep breath, counts to 10 and backwards in Mandarin, while reminding himself that he _needs_ this guy, that _feelings_ will only make this whole Thing worse, that after their mutual alliance/deal/whatever this is is concluded they probably won’t ever see each other again. Tells himself not to get attached after five e-mails, a carrier pigeon (long story), sixteen (16) text messages, and this short exchange ― never mind their history, that was decades ago, they’ve both changed as people, more cynical, world-weary, _aged_.

Says, “Buy me dinner first, you heathen.”

―●◉●―

Îmwe does buy him dinner. Or rather, he tells Baze to follow him, walks out of the back of the– Baze assumed it was a safe house, the front of a Chinese restaurant being just that, a front, but. But, it all seems to flow a bit too smoothly, everything seems a bit too _real_ , and then he is once again seated (window seat, best view in the restaurant, and if you’re lucky you might even see the stray cat that sometimes begs for scraps from unassuming tourists, he’s a great showman and probably rivals even my own theatrics, Îmwe tells him; Baze scoffs, tells Îmwe that no one could ever do that). Baze realizes that the place is not as shady as he had first thought.

Turns out Îmwe owns the restaurant, as a fun side-project to his hacking, because, “We can’t always be busy doing illegal stuff that’s also fun, you taught me that, wink wonk.” He actually says the ‘wink wonk’ out loud. Baze quietly takes a sip from his chai tea and tells himself that it _isn’t_ endearing, and he should not imagine Îmwe’s impish smirk somewhere else.

(Like most things he tells himself not to do, he fails to follow up on it.)

―●◉●―

They work well together, the two of them. Moreso than Baze had thought when he first sought out “IpMan2.0” (it’s a pun, you see, Îmwe says, when Baze asks him in passing, then proceeds to tell Baze how he got into wing chun in the first place, and three hours later Baze knows a lot more about spirituality and martial arts and also hacking than he ever needed to know), then still just an elusive legend, a means to an end. It’s when working well together morphs into late-night talks about Baze’s betrayal, Chirrut’s loss of sight, sharing their traumas and the unspoken promise of not sharing it with anyone else, that Baze thinks maybe he’s in too deep.

It’s when he catches himself staring at Chirrut for the fifth time in as many minutes. When he subconsciously moves things out of the way so Chirrut won’t stumble over them. When he makes one cup of black coffee and one cup of tea to which he adds, like, five tablespoons of sugar and a dollop of honey, because he knows Chirrut despises coffee but needs sugar like normal human beings need water. It’s those times and dozens, hundreds, thousands more, being saccharine-sweet and domestic together, that Baze lets himself believe being in too deep might not be so bad. (It doesn’t last, never does. He staunchly ignores those moments when he gets a better grip on himself, berates himself for his lapse of judgement.)

Still, somewhere between “I need you so I can exact painful revenge on this man I once considered a brother and all of his underlings” and “I have never been this drunk in the presence of someone else since my college days”, Îmwe becomes Chirrut, becomes _want/need/keep/lo―_  no.

Baze grits his teeth, resolves to find this bastard that fucked him over faster, throws himself into the hunt, because this is what he can do, this is what he does best, and there’s nothing to deny if he doesn’t notice it’s there, right? Right.

―●◉●―

If Chirrut notices Baze distancing himself from him, he doesn’t say anything.

In fact, Chirrut doesn’t say anything at all except for a blearily murmured “good morning” while cupping his cup of cavity-inducing tea like a life-line. He is oddly quiet the night after they get disastrously drunk and probably made some bad life decisions that would drive his mother to an early grave if she were still alive (not like he remembers it, but he knows himself well enough to know what he’s like when he gets that drunk).

Normally, Chirrut talks. A lot. Incessantly. It’s kind of his thing, the same way grunting or humming noncommittally to show he’s still listening is Baze’s thing. Chirrut talks and Baze grunt-hums and that, then, is their thing.

Barring the times when he’s meditating, he keeps up this stream-of-consciousness around Baze that Baze found irritating at the beginning of their time together but has grown to like as a background noise to whatever he would be doing at the time. (Baze, once, during the first week of their alliance/deal/ _whatever_ told Chirrut to shut up or he’d gag him. Chirrut’s response was to look very considering, and Baze huffed, “You would seriously try to rile me up just to see if I’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Chirrut grinned, bright and sunny ― Baze’s heart _did not_ skip a beat, thank you very much ― and shook his head. Said, “I love my own voice too much for that.”)

The quiet, then, seems– wrong. Jarring. Like missing the last step on the stairs going down.

When Baze finally has enough of Chirrut not-moping, because he’s seen Chirrut mope, he’d been doing that non-stop in his cell after he was arrested, this is ― it’s different, but Baze doesn’t know how he can tell, he just does, although he resolves not to look at that too closely ― he asks Chirrut about it. Or. Well:

“Found something you love hearing even more than your own voice?”

Never let it be said that Baze is not subtle.

Chirrut smiles, tight, not at all like the ones Baze has grown accustomed to. Says, absently, “Something like that, yes.” Frowns, as if that wasn’t what he wanted to say.

Then he shrugs, goes back to coding, or decoding, or trying to find more bases of the organization Baze wants to burn to the ground and salt the earth of or, maybe, even finding a new recipe to try for his restaurant, but not before muttering something that, to Baze, sounds like an accusation and a reprimand both (aimed at whom, Baze doesn’t know).

―●◉●―

_“Shall I tell you your fortune, officer?” Chirrut had asked Baze when they’d first met, and after he was arrested. The part in-between, where Chirrut knocked out several police officers (while screaming FUCK BLUE LIVES!), led them on a wild goose chase through Chinatown, and then on an honest-to-god car chase, Baze preferred not to think about. He was called in as reinforcements, but they’d already gotten Chirrut in handcuffs by then._

_Being in handcuffs in a police car hadn’t deterred Chirrut, however, from telling Baze’s (unwanted, and very likely, most definitely, fake) fortune to him._

_“I see– hah, get it? I_ see _? I’m hilarious, admit it, it’d be a shame to lock a comedian such as me up–”_

_Baze, despite himself, had snorted a bit at that, although he hadn’t commented, and the rest of the trip to the police station was filled with Chirrut telling Baze about betrayal, some fucking love story, and, to Baze’s amusement, an important event he wouldn’t remember come morning, as he would be too drunk the night before (it was amusing mostly because Baze had never gotten blackout drunk, and had no intentions whatsoever to change that)._

Later, much later, Chirrut is lying in Baze’s lap, unseeing eyes surprisingly clear for someone who’s bleeding so damn much, and he has the gall, the fucking nerve, to smile, toothy and bright, gums showing, teeth bloody and expression feral. Baze is trying to stop the bleeding, tells himself ( _stupid-stupid-stupid, should-never-have-let-him-go-along, not-again, this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things_ ), almost-but-not-quite-panicky, that it’ll be fine, he’ll be fine (doesn’t know which one of them he refers to, doesn’t know if _he’ll_ ever be fine if Chirrut dies, then, in his lap, arms, still grinning– why is he grinning?).

“Shall I tell you your fortune, officer?” Chirrut asks, teasingly, like it’s some big joke they’re both in on, like he isn’t fucking bleeding out and dying while Baze is trying to stop the bleeding as best he can.

“Shut up,” Baze growls as he applies more pressure to the wound in Chirrut’s abdomen.

Then, warning, “Don’t,” at the same time as Chirrut’s grin widens and he says, “Or you’ll gag me?”

Baze ignores the quip, focuses on the still-bleeding, what the actual fuck, wound, internally berates himself for not drawing out his former-brother-in-arms’ death for doing this to Chirrut. Chirrut, who is still grinning, although it’s starting to look more pained now.

“There is– There is a person, who loves you, very much so, and–”

“Would it kill you to shut up for once in your life?” (And if either of them notice Baze’s voice break halfway through, neither mention it.)

“Yes, actually, or I wouldn’t–” a pained hiss, “– I wouldn’t be talking right now. I– I’d rather you hear it right now so you can dismiss it later, if–” Chirrut breaks off then, grimacing, eyes briefly clouded over in pain.

Baze takes a deep breath, smells blood and gunpowder and smoke, hears Chirrut’s and his own ragged breathing, sirens wailing in the distance; says, “Fine, just don’t waste any more of your breath than you can spare, I rather like you alive.” _More than you could possibly imagine_ , goes unsaid, because Baze is a coward, and if these were to be Chirrut’s last moments (a thought he quickly shies away from), he wouldn’t want Chirrut to know about it and then not have it be reciprocated.

Chirrut takes a shuddering breath, tries reaching out with a hand drenched in blood (his, or someone else’s, it’s difficult to tell), but lets it fall down before he gets it where he wants it to be. Baze grips it, gently, counterpoint to everything that is around them.

“I wonder, sometimes, if you remember when we first met, and I told you–”

“You told me I would be stabbed in the back by one of my closest friends, which, yes, happened. You then went on to spout some bullshit about some person who, by your account, sounds like they would be my soulmate, a ridiculous concept in and of itself, but I would not accept them until a life or de– oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” Chirrut’s smile is wry, pained, but underneath it all he still manages to radiate smugness.

Baze swallows. Searches for words and comes up short, except… There was one more thing, one more prediction or what-have-you.

“What happened, that night we– I got drunk?”

“You told me you loved me, then immediately afterwards told me you would never act on those feelings because after you’d be done with… this,” and here Chirrut weakly waves at the space around them, “we’d never see each other again and it would probably be for the best.”

An amused quirk to his mouth, then, when he adds, “You also told me not to tell myself.”

Baze listens, and processes, and processes some more. Reboots his brain to bypass the Error: 404 message popping up. (And isn’t that funny, he’s starting to think of himself in computer metaphors, Chirrut’s rubbing off on him, just like his blood is― no.)

Says, softly, but with feeling, “ _Fuck._ ”

“Not right now, darling, I don’t think I’m up for that – hah! Ouch, laughing hurts now, not fun – yet. Although, for what it’s worth, I love you too.”

Baze almost doesn’t hear him, as he’s still cursing up a storm and trying to get Chirrut not to bleed out before medics arrive. Almost being the keyword here.

After he’s done processing that particular bit, Chirrut has closed his eyes, and Baze panics because nono _no-thiscan’tbehappening-staywithme-don’tgo_ , holds Chirrut close as if that will help any (it makes him feel slightly better, though, for a bit there).

“You’re squeezing me too tight, Malbus,” Chirrut manages to get out between rasping breaths, blearily opening his eyes, and Baze sobs with relief.

This is how the few medics Baze called in for back-up earlier finds them: wrapped up in one another, drenched in blood, but alive, which, for Baze, is all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear to god my wifi is home of phonic and I will sue my provider because I've tried to upload this thrice while it shorted out, and the formatting kept getting deleted?? So if anything looks wonky, it's because of that.


End file.
